Countdown

I was watching something from the UK on YouTube and it reminded me of my trip to England (go figure). There was this great, very low budget game show called Countdown. The premise of the show was that contestants in the first round selected a set number of consonents and vowels and then had to form the longest word possible from those letters. The bonus round consisted of a math problem where a person selected numbers at random and had to figure out the largest number generated when plugged into a given formula. Apparently, it is very popular now and still runs daily.

Question: Why hasn't this show made the leap over here like Weakest Link did? Do I really want to know the answer because it will reflect the generally low atmosphere of education in the U.S.?